31/08/2007

From the Feuilletons is a weekly overview of what's been happening in the German-language cultural pages and appears every Friday at 3 pm. CET.. Here a key to the German newspapers.

Polityka 31.08.2007

Germany is once more the subject of fierce debate in the current election campaign in Poland. One Polish politician has described the German resistance movement during World War II as wimpy. Former German President Richard von Weizsäckerresponds in an interview with Polish journalist Adam Krzeminski, published in German in the Polish magazine Polityka: "Such a derogatory remark about the German resistance is of course hardly founded. But at the same time, I can't expect Poles to have a real appreciation of the extremely difficult, tragic and ultimately unsuccessful efforts on the part of the different German resistance groups. In the movement of the 20th of July, 1944 (the attack on Hitler's life - ed.), the most important aim wasn't at all getting rid of Hitler, or bringing and end to the criminal war and obtaining the best conditions for Germany. The plotters knew the Allies were insisting on unconditional surrender. No, the most important thing was to show the world there was another Germany. We shouldn't forget that, after the attack, more people died on all the fronts, in the concentration camps and under the bombs than since the beginning of the war."

Neue Zürcher Zeitung 31.08.2007

Writer Richard Wagnersees Eastern and Central Europe undergoing a long transformation process before a successful end is reached. He fears that the legacy of communism will be felt subtly for a long time yet. "Communists worked with half-truths. They didn't invent history, they manipulated it. Most of the war crimes trials of the post-war era didn't even uphold constitutional standards. In fact, these trials should be re-opened. But that's practically impossible, which means that revisionists will continue to find the justification they need. Communist propaganda destroyed the ethical value of history. Re-gaining that is absolutely necessary for a balanced view of history. How much time this will take is made clear by the endless discussion of collaboration in the Netherlands, despite the democratic situation there." (Read our feature "A writer in the Cold War" by Wagner here)

Frankfurter Rundschau 31.08.2007

In an epic and masterfully conducted interview, Andre Müller asks writerPeter Handke about - what else? - Serbia and Milosevic. "He was voted out of office. That he was extradited remains an eternal disgrace for Serbia," he says. To Müller's interjection that the Serbian writerBiljana Srbljanovic says that he, Handke, has no idea that Milosevic had members of the opposition murdered on the street, he answers. "That's simply not true. There was a totally free press in Yugoslavia. And there was the West's economic embargo, which gave rise to mafia-like structures. These little mafia groups fought each other. How can that be connected to Milosevic? ... It's shameless to claim that. This girl was asked by Spiegel, which backed the war, to keep a journal during the Nato war against Yugoslavia. As the bombs were falling, she wrote that things were totally safe, just a bit of glass shattering here and there. In truth, over a thousand Serbs died in this war. This woman is a whore to the West. That's what I call it." (Two features by Müller here, a further interview with Handke here)

Frankfurter Rundschau 31.08.2007

The Austrian writer Franzobel admits to taking manic interest in the sales of his books through Amazon. "My latest novel 'Liebesgeschichte' (love story), for example, was at 480th place for a short while. But then within just a few days it had plummeted to the 20,000th spot, and is now steady at 14,000. That's extremely frustrating when you think that Robert Menasse's new book is at 100, and Arno Geiger at 2,000. Fine, by the same token I've got Peter Henisch and Margit Schreiner, both at around 100,000, well under control. And even Gerhard Roth and Josef Winkler are trailing me, while oddly Thomas Glavinic, who caricatures the literature business in his new book, is swinging around like a pendulum."

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 31.08.2007

Jordan Mejias was invited to chat with genome decoderCraig Venter and colleagues, as they painted pictures of a brave new world on a nice farm in Connecticut. "Venter considers the manipulation of human genes to be not only possible, but desirable. Of course he intends to disappoint the prisoner who asks him to design an attractive cell-mate just as he does the odious ruler who wishes for a mentally-undeveloped working class. But, Venter asks, who could have anything against people with genetically boosted intelligence? Or against new genomes that are discovering as yet unknown sources of bio energy? Nobody on Eastover Farm has any qualms about the eugenic revival. Things that would cause massive controversy in a group of Germans are wafting around here freely, under the maple trees that bend gently in the wind."

Die Tageszeitung 31.08.2007

Cristina Nord reports good-naturedly from the second day of the Venice Film Festival, where Takeshi Kitano's non-competition review of cinema "Glory to the Filmmaker!" more than tickled her fancy. "The film is a spirited tour through the history of film, and through Kitano's own work. One unbeatable scene, for example, is the shoot-out in a parking garage in which the bullets become visible through slow-motion, fly at Kitano like in 'Matrix', then smash into the wall behind him before bouncing back and once more racing at Kitano. When one of them hits the back of his head he stumbles and says: 'Ouch!'"

Süddeutsche Zeitung 31.08.2007

Gerhard Matzig waves his finger at German architects for their lack of concern about the environment. "First: architects have no idea about residential architecture. Secondly: they understand nothing about the technical component, which is the most important in ecological building. Both of these preconceptions are true. German architects, living in a nation that is leading in environmental technologies, are simply missing the boat on the most radical challenge that their profession has ever been faced with. It's not to be believed."

Saturday 11 - 17 December, 2010

A clutch of German newspapers launch an appeal against the criminalisation of Wikileaks. Vera Lengsfeld remembers GDR dissident Jürgen Fuchs and how he met death in his cell. All the papers were bowled over Xavier Beauvois' film "Of Gods and Men." The FR enjoys a joke but not a picnic at a staging of Stravinsky's "Rake's Progress" in Berlin. Gustav Seibt provides a lurid description of Napoleonic soap in the SZ. German-Turkish Dogan Akhanli author explains what it feels like to be Josef K. read more

Saturday 4 - Friday 10 December

Colombian writer Hector Abad defends Nobel Prize laureate Mario Vargas Llosa against European Latin-America romantics. Wikileaks dissident Daniel Domscheit-Berg criticises the new publication policy of his former employer. The Sprengel Museum has put on a show of child nudes by die Brücke artists. The SZ takes a walk through the Internet woods with FAZ prophet of doom Frank Schirrmacher. The FAZ is troubled by Christian Thielemann's unstable tempo in the Beethoven cycle. And the FR meets China Free Press publisher, Bao Pu.read more

Saturday 27 November - Friday 3 December

Danish author Frederik Stjernfelt explains how the Left got its culturist ideas. Slavenka Draculic writes about censoring Angelina Jolie who wanted to make a film in Bosnia. Daniel Cohn-Bendit talksÃÂ ÃÂ about his friendship, falling out and reconciliation with Jean-Luc Godard. Wikileaks has caused an embarrassed silence in the Arab world, where not even al-Jazeera reported on the what the sheiks really think. Alan Posener calls for the Hannah Arendt Institute in Dresden to be shut down.read more

Saturday 20 - Friday 26 November, 2010

The theatre event of the week came in a twin pack: Roland Schimmelpfennig's new play, a post-colonial "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" opened at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin and the Thalia in Hamburg. The anarchist pamphlet "The Coming Insurrection" has at last been translated into German and has ignited the revolutionary sympathies of at least two leading German broadsheets, the FAZ and the SZ. But the taz, Germany's left-wing daily, says the pamphlet is strongly right-wing. What's left and right anyway? came the reply.read more

Saturday 13 - Friday 19 November, 2010

Dieter Schlesak levels grave accusations against his former friend and colleague, Oskar Pastior, who spied on him for the Securitate. Banat-Swabian author and vice chairman of the Oskar Pastior Foundation, Ernest Wichner, turns on Schlesak for spreading malicious rumours. Die Zeit portrays the Berlin rapper Harris, and the moment he knew he was German. Dutch author Cees Nooteboom meditates on the near lust for physical torture in the paintings of Francisco de Zurburan. An exhibition in Mannheim displays the dream house photography of Julius Schulman.read more

Saturday 6 - Friday 12 November, 2010

The NZZ asks why banks invest in art. The FAZ gawps at the unnatural stack of stomach muscles in Michelangelo's drawings. The taz witnesses a giant step for the "Yugo palaver". Bernard-Henri Levy describes Sakineh Ashtiani's impending execution as a test for Iran and the west.Journalist Michael Anti talks about the healthy relationship between the net and the Chinese media. Literary academic Helmut Lethen describes how Ernst Jünger stripped the worker of all organic substances.read more

Saturday 30 October - Friday 5 November, 2010

Now that German TV has just beatifiedPope Pius XII, Rolf Hochmuth tells die Welt where he got the idea for his play "The Deputy". The FR celebrates Elfriede Jelinek's "brilliantly malicious" farce about the collapse of the Cologne City Archive. "Carlos" director Olivier Assayas makes it clear that the revolutionary subject is a figment of the imagination. The SZ returns from the Shanghai Expo with a cloying after-taste of sweet 'n' sour. And historian Wang Hui tells the NZZ that China's intellectuals have plenty of freedom to pose critical questions.read more

Saturday 23 - Friday 29 October, 2010

Author Doron Rabinovici protests against the concessions of moderate Austrian politicians to the FPÖ: recently in Vienna, children were sent back to Kosovo at gunpoint. Ian McEwan wonders why major German novelists didn't mention the Wall. The NZZ looks through the Priz Goncourt shortlist and finds plenty of writers with more bite than Houellebecq. The FAZ outs two of Germany's leading journalists who fiercely guarded the German Foreign Ministry's Nazi past. Jens-Martin Eriksen and Frederik Stjernfelt analyse the symptoms of culturalism, left and right. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht demonstratively yawns at German debate.read more

Saturday 16 - Friday 22 October, 2010

A new book chronicles the revolt of revolting "third persons" at Suhrkamp publishers in the wild days of 1968. Necla Kelek is appalled by the speech of the very Christian Christian Wulff, the German president, in Turkey. The taz met a new faction of hardcore Palestinians who are fighting for separate sex hairdressing in Gaza. Sinologist Andreas Schlieker reports on the new Chinese willingness to restructure the heart. And the Cologne band Erdmöbel celebrate the famous halo around the frying pan.read more

Saturday 9 - Friday 15 October, 2010

The FR laps up the muscular male bodies and bellies at the Michelangelo exhibition in the Viennese Albertina. The same paper is outraged by the cowardice of the Berlin exhibition "Hitler and the Germans". Mario Vargas-Llosa remembers a bad line from Sweden. Theologist Friedrich Wilhelm Graf makes it very clear that Western values are not Judaeo-Christian values. The Achse des Guten is annoyed by the attempts of the mainstream media to dismiss Mario Vargas-Llosa. The NZZ celebrates the tireless self-demolition of Polish writer and satirist Slawomir Mrozek.read more

Saturday 2 - Friday 8 October, 2010

Nigerian writer Niyi Osundare explains why his country has become uninhabitable. German Book Prize winner Melinda Nadj Abonji says Switzerland only pretends to be liberal. German author Monika Maron is not surethat Islam really does belong to Germany. Russian writer Oleg Yuriev explains the disastrous effects of postmodernism on the Petersburg Hermitage. Argentinian author Martin Caparros describes how the Kirchners have co-opted the country's revolutionary history. And publisher Damian Tabarovsky explains why 2001 was such an explosively creative year for Argentina.read more

Saturday 25 September - Friday 1 October

Three East German theatre directors talk about the trauma of reunification. In the FAZ, Thilo Sarrazin denies accusations that his book propagates eugenics: "I am interested in the interplay of nature and nurture." Polemics are being drowned out by blaring lullabies, author Thea Dorn despairs. Author Iris Radisch is dismayed by the state of the German novel - too much idle chatter, not enough literary clout. Der Spiegel posts its interview with the German WikiLeaks spokesman, Daniel Schmitt. And Vaclav Havel's appeal to award the Nobel prize to Liu Xiabobo has the Chinese authorities pulling out their hair.read more

Saturday 18 - Friday 24 September, 2010

Herta Müller's response to the news that poet Oskar Pastior was a Securitate informant was one of overwhelming grief: "When he returned home from the gulag he was everybody's game." Theatre director Luk Perceval talks about the veiled depression in his theatre. Cartoonist Molly Norris has disappeared after receiving death threats for her "Everybody Draw Mohammed" campaign. The Berliner Zeitung approves of the mellowing in Pierre Boulez' music. And Chinese writer Liao Yiwu, allowed to leave China for the first time, explains why schnapps is his most important writing tool.read more

Saturday 10 - Friday 17 September, 2010

The poet Oskar Pastior was a Securitate informant, the historian Stefan Sienerth has discovered. Biologist Veronika Lipphardt dismisses Thilo Sarrazin'sincendiary intelligence theories as a load of codswallop. A number of prominent Muslim intellectuals in Germany have written an open letter to President Christian Wulff, calling for him to "make a stand for a democratic culture based on mutual respect." And a Shell study has revealed that Germany's youth aspire to be just like their parents.read more

Saturday 4 - Friday 10 September, 2010

Thilo Sarrazin has buckled under the stress of the past two weeks and resigned from the board of the Central Bank. His book, "Germany is abolishing itself", however, continues to keep Germany locked in a debate about education and immigration and intelligence. Also this week, Mohammed cartoonist Kurt Westergaard has been awarded the M100 prize for defending freedom of opinion. Chancellor Angela Merkel gave a speech at the award ceremony: "The secret of freedom is courage". The FAZ interviewed Westergaard, who expressed his disappointment that the only people who had shown him no support were those of his own class. read more